25 September 2005

HARTBEESPOORT Dam (or "Poo Lake" as it’s now affectionately known) is one of the more popular leisure destinations in Gauteng, and for good reason.

Unlike Durban, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg sits on high ground and has no natural water feature on which we can float our boats. Which is why Hartbeespoort Dam has gradually become the aquatic playground of the rich and famous of Gauteng. Completed as long ago as 1923, the principal purpose of the dam was to provide irrigation for the surrounding farmland, but then the developers smelt money and moved in.

Today the shores of Poo Lake are cluttered with eyesore developments; convoys of construction lorries rumble along the surrounding roads holding up traffic and throwing up great clouds of dust. The upshot of all this is that Hartbeespoort Dam is no longer a very nice place to visit. Greed, an apparent absence of any building regulations, and a generous dose of bad taste have transformed what was once a tranquil weekend getaway into a thriving residential node complete with faux Tuscan residences.

In winter the water level of the dam can fall dramatically and, back in the drought of the ’80s, thick, green, rank-smelling weed lined the shores and had to be expensively removed. Low water levels and recurrent weed problems are natural hazards, though, and little can be done to prevent them. The real problem is the dam’s unnatural hazard which is overpopulation and the more buildings that pop up, the lower the quality of life will become.

In the days when just a few developments lined the shores, it was possible to go out on a boat and find your own piece of tranquil water. That has already changed and it won’t be too long before the dam is the watery equivalent of our congested roads. Obviously, anyone buying property there for a few million rands expects to have access to the water. If luxury car sales are anything to go by, the preference will be for big flashy boats. So expect the dam to be full of expensive floating gin palaces with names such as "Far Call" (the obvious answer to the question, "how much did it cost?") with ghastly men in rollneck sweaters and nautical caps swaggering around calling one another Cap’n. The mega-rich will obviously need to differentiate themselves from the run of the mill fairly well off and will have helicopters on the back of their craft and their own personal submarines to allow them to explore below the surface and check whether the local municipality is telling the truth when it says that untreated sewage is no longer being pumped into the dam.

The great advantage of Hartbeespoort Dam, of course, is that there is absolutely nowhere to go — which is great news, because it will discourage boat-jacking. Once you’ve covered the roughly 20km² of the dam (considerably less if the water level drops), you’ve experienced everything it has to offer. There are no massive waves or squalls to cope with, and the chances of being overturned by a breaching whale are virtually nil. So it can only be a matter of time before the hawkers move in and a man bobbing around on a rubber dinghy offers you white coathangers, sunglasses and DVDs of Pirates of the Caribbean.